I get my blood glucose test strips from my chemist for free through our health services Long Term Illness scheme without any restrictions.

Over the years, I have figured out how many I needed per month and got them religiously from my chemist. If I noticed them piling up in the press I didn’t get them for a month or two but once I started using a cgm I always seemed to have a more than generous supply. Yeah, I know, those of you who figured this out quickly are giving me eye rolls.

Once I had built up confidence and trust in my new device I reduced my test strip usage by about half but still continued to get the full month supply from my chemist. However, iIt never would have occurred to me to actually recalculate how many I needed and reduce the number on a monthly basis if we hadn’t been talking about the freestyle libre being cost effective when the reduction of test strips was taken into account. Lightbulb!

Since then, I’ve reduced the number of boxes of testing strips I get from four to two and I still have a generous supply. Just because I don’t pay for it personally doesn’t mean I don’t pay: it all comes out of income tax revenue and I should be more aware that everyone pays.

I’ve also been looking at all my other supplies and only get what need and always check my big bag of supplies before I leave my chemist in case they’ve put extra in there because once I leave the chemist with it they cant use it for someone else.

I wonder how many people are just like me and are not thinking about their supplies because we don’t have to?

My friend Christine checked into our hotel on Thursday night last week before Thriveabetes and noticed this on the floor right outside her door. A fellow person with diabetes was here #DiabetesintheWild

It feels so good to be writing again. I love blogging!